Multiple electrode catheters are used in electrophysiological testing for evaluating and treating heart arrhythmias. Such techniques are used to record electrical impulses intrinsic to the heart at various locations in the heart as well as to induce extrinsic electrical impulses to the heart at such various locations and to record electrical signals responsive to the delivered electrical impulses.
In such a procedure, the electrode leads of such a multiple electrode catheter must be connected to a recorder and to a stimulator, i.e., an electrical impulse generator. The present method for interconnecting catheter leads, patient reference leads and recorder leads is to connect the leads to a number of switches, each having selector positions for designating every electrode. In other words, if there are five catheters with a total of 30 electrodes plus a patient reference electrode, each switch would have 31 selector positions. In such switches, the selector position number is related to the catheter electrodes in an arbitrary manner which can vary from procedure to procedure. This makes it very difficult to keep track of which electrode of the various catheters is related to a specific selector position. Such difficulty can lead to confusion and error and the possibility of faulty evaluations of the recorded data.
The typical method for using one or more electrodes to deliver an electrical impulse is to manually disconnect those leads from the switches and connect them to the stimulator leads. Such manual connecting and disconnecting of electrode leads can also lead to confusion and error. If error results, the heart may be stimulated with an electrode which is not desired, resulting in recorded data which could be misleading and possibly a danger to the patient. At the very least, changing such connections is time consuming.